I hate it when I’m right,
mostly because my predictions are invariably dark. We’re lost, doomed,
the end is near. It’s always something. And while it may be in bad
taste to say “I told you so,” I did indeed tell you so back in March of 2003, when the
invasion of Iraq was nigh:

“The war on Iraq is going to be short, but the occupation will be
a task without end, a heavy burden that will be more than just
punishment for our vainglorious ‘victory.’ As the self-elected arbiter
of every ethnic dispute that arises among the quarrelsome peoples of
the Middle East, we are walking into a snake-pit, I fear, without
thought of the consequences. A future of endless conflicts, perpetual
war for perpetual peace, and color-coded terror unto infinity – that is
what we have to look forward to.”

That’s pretty much how it
went down, wouldn’t you say?

You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see it coming down the pike: the impending disaster of “Operation
Iraqi Freedom.” There’s a lotgoing on in Iraq these days, but freedom
has nothing to do with it, unless you’re talking about the “freedom”
not to have electricity, or the “freedom” to live in fear.

I was hardly alone in my skepticism,
although our little band of naysayers was, at first, frighteningly small:
but these skeptics were not given a platform. The airwaves and the op
ed pages of America’s newspapers were, for the most part, monopolized by the War Party’s myrmidons, although USA Today did give some space for this then-unfashionable opinion:

“President Bush has said
that American troops will stay in Iraq ‘as long as necessary and not a day longer’
— a statement that obfuscates but doesn’t elucidate. The American
public thinks we are going to go in, get Saddam and come marching triumphantly
home. The truth is that, as Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki has
testified, we are entering into an open-ended commitment that will involve
stationing ‘several hundred thousand’ troops in Iraq indefinitely.”

Now, Johnnie will come marching
home – or will he? We’re told all “combat troops” are being
pulled out, but this is just a matter of redefining a redundancy: after
all, what, exactly, are “non-combat troops”? Soldiers engage in
combat, and our soldiers are still there, although a great many are
now “private” contractors: the actual numbers haven’t gone down
appreciably.

It’s just a matter of word
play: of finding the right phrases, the most convincing weasel words
to make it all seem right. So they had to rename “Operation Iraqi
Freedom,” an unimaginative moniker if ever there was one, and came
up with the equally uninventive “Operation New Dawn.” Yawn.

That’s your “new dawn.”
One wonders why they bother. Does anybody in America even care? It’s
almost Labor Day weekend, and we’re getting out our grills and going
down to the supermarket to stock up on dead animal carcasses and potato
salad fixings. Yum. Only the pundits care, and they’re busy covering
their own asses for having fallen for Bush’ssales pitch. Take Anne
Applebaum, formerly one of the war’s most ardent advocates, whose
act of contrition is as cold and calculating as her initial support
for the invasion was smugly self-satisfied. Back in 2003, she was touting the triumph of the neoconservatives who claimed
they could and would “liberate” not only Iraq but the entire region:

“’The Regime has gone,’
the White House told Americans at the end of last week. Iraqis too heard
President George Bush’s voice on the radio and television last week,
promising not to stop fighting until the whole ‘corrupt gang’ is gone, promising to keep order, promising freedom.

“At a meeting in St Petersburg,
the axis of obstructionism – France, Russia and Germany – were sounding
defensive. Meanwhile, both the American Treasury Secretary and the Deputy
Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, called on those same three countries
to forget about the debt, perhaps as much as $20 billion, that Iraq
owes to them. Peace rallies planned for Washington this weekend were
suddenly thrown into disarray. Some protesters canceled buses; others
wanted to shift the focus back to ‘globalization,’ which has always
interested them more any way.

“On the face of it, the
events of last week do look, in other words, like total vindication
for the President. And not just the President: the small band of presidential
advisers and supporters who have worked hard, for much of the past decade,
to get us to this moment have also finally been proven right. Some,
like Wolfowitz and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, are in the Administration.
Others, like Richard Perle, are advisers. Still others have worked out
of Washington think-tanks, editors’ offices and corporate boardrooms,
tirelessly arguing for ‘regime change’ in Iraq, slowly moving the
issue from the fringes to the center of debate.

“It all seems inevitable
in retrospect …”

It always seems inevitable,
the progress of power: whoever is winning now will carry their victory
through to the end, or so the conventional wisdom invariably avers.
George Orwell made this point about intellectuals enamored of power
in his essay critiquing James Burnham, one of the first neocons, who
predicted a Hitlerite victory when German armies were sweeping through
Europe, and wrote an admiring profile of Stalin when the monster loomed
large. Applebaum, a fervent and early supporter of the war, is a textbook
case of the Burnham Syndrome, which Orwell described thus:

“Power worship blurs political
judgment because it leads, almost
unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever
is
winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese
have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever,
if
the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo;
if
the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in
London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that
things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than
they ever do in practice.”

Applebaum, and her fellow neocons,
are nothing if not worshipers of power, with American military power
being their panacea [.pdf] for many of the world’s problems. As US news networks
struggled to find those Iraqis who were supposed to be dancing in the
streets, and filmed the toppling of Saddam’s statue as if it were
a real event, Applebaum was swept along in the general euphoria, allowing
herself to believe what she so desperately wanted to believe: that the
invasion and conquest of Iraq was a nearly effortless victory for Freedom
and Democracy that only those European “obstructionists” and a few peaceniks in the States failed to appreciate.

“Even if violence abates,
even if U.S. troops go home, we have still paid a very high price for
our victory—much higher than we usually admit.”

Applebaum’s complaints are
all about America: there is only a passing, and indirect mention of
the unimaginable price paid by Iraqis – over 100,000 dead, at a minimum,
and their society shattered seemingly beyond repair. While Iraq war
supporters of Applebaum’s ilk often rhapsodized about the many alleged
benefits for Iraqis that would flow from an American “liberation,”
in the end it’s all about us.

Applebaum is worried that “America’s
reputation for effectiveness” is in the trashcan, because, while we
toppled Saddam pronto, “the occupation was chaotic.” The reason?
“The Pentagon was squabbling with the State Department,” she cavils,
“the soldiers had no instructions and didn’t speak the language. The
overall impression, in Iraq and everywhere else, was of American incompetence.”
Oh, and “the insurgency appeared to take Washington by surprise.”

Yet surely Applebaum was herself
more than a bit taken aback by the persistence of Iraqi resistance:
from the tone of her earlier screed, wherein she hailed “the total
vindication of the president,” one would think that the Iraqis would
present no further problem.

In any case, does Applebaum
really imagine that even if every US soldier in Iraq spoke fluent Arabic,
and the Pentagon and State had been in a state of Vulcan mind-meld for
the war’s duration, things would have turned out any better? Was the
Iraq disaster made possible by a mere failure to communicate? This is
such a facile notion that it barely merits repetition, let alone refutation.
The soldiers didn’t receive the right “instructions,” she claims:
but what would these have consisted of – don’t torture prisoners?
Don’t shoot people down at random in the streets? Be nice?

The insurgency persisted and
eventually came to challenge our glorious “victory” for the simple
reason that people hate foreign occupiers. Is that really so hard to
understand?

Applebaum moans that “America’s
ability to organize a coalition” has suffered:

“Participation in the
Iraq war cost Tony Blair his reputation and the Spanish government an election. After an initial surge of support,
the Iraqi occupation proved unpopular even in countries where America
is popular, such as Italy and Poland. Almost no country that participated
in the conflict derived any economic or diplomatic benefits from doing
so. None received special U.S. favors—not even
Georgia, which sent 2,000 soldiers and received precisely zero U.S. support during its military conflict with
Russia.”

This is, in reality, one of
the unintended benefits of the Iraq war: there will be far fewer
suckers willing to follow us off a cliff in the future. As for Tony
Blair and the Spaniards: good riddance, I say. And leave it to Applebaum,
America’s leading Russophobe, to get in that dig about Georgia, the
would-be conqueror of Abkhazia and Ossetia. The further we stay
from the Caucasus, the better.

She also mourns the loss of
“America’s ability to influence the Middle East” and our habit
of “thinking like a global power.” The Iranians have been empowered
– an outcome opponents of the war predicted, and proponents like Applebaum
ignored – and the effect on the Israeli-Palestinian faceoff has not
been “positive.” Yet what did she think would happen in the rest
of the region as US troops trampled on the ruins of what had once been
one of the most modern in the Middle East? Did she and her neocon friends
really imagine they’d be met with showers of rose petals instead of
bullets?

As for “thinking like a global
power,” Applebaum’s complaint is that we neglected other rising
threats: “China’s rise to real world-power status, Latin America’s
drift to the far left, and Russia’s successful use of pipeline politics
to divide Europe.” So many crises, so little time! It’s hard being
the world’s policeman, one barely has enough time to conquer one upstart
country than another wiseacre arises on the other side of the earth,
just begging to be slapped down. Imperialism means multi-tasking:
that‘s the lesson Applebaum would have us take away from the Iraqi
quagmire.

Her last complaint is almost
too much for any decent person to bear: “Finally, there are [a]few domestic items that are
often overlooked. One worries me in particular:
America’s ability to care for its wounded veterans.”

This is obscene. For Applebaum,
who tirelessly plumbed for war, to raise this issue, of all issues,
just about takes the cake for chutzpah. Wasn’t she “worried”
about this before she began agitating for war? Or didn’t it
occur to her that many would be horribly wounded, and that the costs,
both in human and material terms, would be horrific? Of course she knew
many would come out of the “liberation” of Iraq with missing limbs,
or blinded, or maimed in some other horrible manner, but she didn’t
care enough about it at the time – it didn’t figure greatly
in her calculus of costs and benefits.

As we contemplate the enormity
of the tragedy we unleashed in Iraq, these acts of contrition by clueless
neocons are more than merely irritating: they are intolerable. There
has to be some penalty for being so wrong – and yet there is none.
Far from it, these people are being rewarded with honors and prestige:
just this morning Applebaum’s buddy, Paul Wolfowitz, was on the op
ed page of the New York Times advising us to stay “engaged”
in Iraq. And Applebaum continues to regale us with her fact-free opinions from the august pages of the Washington Post.

Who will rid us of these omnipresent
self-regarding conscience-less war-bots? They still dominate the op
ed pages of the nation’s newspapers, and they’re all over television,
solemnly averring that our moral duty is to police the world, and sagely
advising that our godlike powers are equal to the task.

Soon enough this coalition of
the clueless will be telling us that Iran must be our next target: that
we can and must “liberate” the Persians, who are just waiting for
the slightest signal from Uncle Sam to rise up and smite their oppressors.

Which brings us to the real
lesson to be learned from Iraq, and it is this: whenever you hear someone
pontificating on American foreign policy, do a little research. Find
out what their position was on the invasion of Iraq, and if they were
for it there’s just one thing left to do: change the channel and walk
away.

201203191331 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fjustin%2F2010%2F08%2F31%2Facts-of-contrition%2FActs+of+Contrition2010-09-01+06%3A00%3A22Justin+Raimondohttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012031913 to “Acts of Contrition”

Neoconsservatism ; an acute ( or chronic) disease due to an overabundant use of other peoples blood to satisfy lust for power and moulah. In its acute phase it can be life threatening. Liberalism is not a cure for this illness, unless of course you believe in HOMEOPATHY.
THANKS JUSTIN FOR ANOTHER GREAT PIECE OF POETIC PROSE.

Symptoms: a perpetual smirk (Kristol & Brooks);ubiquitous( they are on every media outlet 24 hours a day); great debating skills (ad hominem attacks)
For more symptoms see a specialist. I recommend the following doctors: Dr Raimando; Dr Weiss; Dr Walt or any realist( with the exception of Dr Kissenger ) or any libertarian. Dr Ron Paul if you are also interested in gynecology. Enough nonsense.

What does the pro war media have in common with the pro war military/industrial complex? They’re both owned and operated by the capitalist ruling class, which runs America and its foreign and domestic policies, in order to increase their wealth and power – in the name of free market capitalism. US capitalism is all about, and has always been about, imperialism and war profiteering. Why do libertarians pretend this imperialism is some temporary abberation rather than the foundation of US capitalism?
“I was a ganster for capitalism” – Gen Smedley Butler

Grady,
Capitalism is about the free exchange of goods and services between free people. The military/industrial complex is about lobbying for, and selling goods and services to, a government, paid for with taxpayer funds and/or sovereign debt. There is a huge difference.

Capitalist? A significantly more appropriate term would be corporatist or neo-mercantilist. This naive misuse of the word capitalism is unfortunately rampant in current times.

"Why do libertarians pretend this imperialism is some temporary abberation…"

Libertarians do not make this claim. Rather, we properly view it as the natural course of the expansion of government power. As an ever-increasing flow of money collects in Washington DC, so to will the vulchers who attempt to feed at the taxpayer trough. This is corporatism/neo-mercantilism. One of the primary reasons for this occurrence is related ot the income tax. Please download the the following free book alone for further information:http://mises.org/etexts/rootofevil.pdf

As militant Zionism (in its Christian as well as Jewish variants) and Neoconservatism are currents which tend to course along the same channels in this country, emsnews's post was not entirely off topic. The War Party is far from monolithic, but the Neocon-Zionist-Israel Lobby complex is currently one of its most important components—and their reach extends deeply into the MSM propaganda apparatus. While emsnews may well have oversimplified matters, she is certainly correct in drawing attention to one of the ideological currents which informs Neoconservative goals and pronouncements. And that includes the goals and pronouncements of the sort of contemptible, temporizing scum that Mr. Raimondo is discussing here.

The people pushing for war were Krauthammer, Kristol, Frum, Wolfowitz et al. But, among the names of the dead and wounded listed on the evening news, I don't recall ever seeing any Goldblatts, Cutlers, Gruenfelds, Rothsteins or Garfinkels.

You know, I think some of you guys don't even bother to read the articles before commenting "on" them. You just ride your hobby horse—whether it's Israel, or capitalism, or religion, or whatever, pro or con—into each comments section and start yapping away. If you want to talk about whatever you like, whenever you like, at whatever tedious length you like, I have a solution for you: get your own blog.

Last night on the Maddow show, I listened agape as she and guest Richard Engle discussed something I thought I'd never hear in the mainstream: Why deceitful hypocrites who helped lie us into this nightmare continue to occupy high-paying positions at the country's foremost news offices and get time on topflight talking-head shows to push their ugly projects. Conclusion: Maddow and Engle admitted they really, really don't have an answer. And, interestingly, neither posited what the REAL reason for the invasion could have been. Ooo. Let's not let THAT Israel-First cat out of the bag.

Another consistent libertarian tactic – pretend that the US economy is not capitalism because it does not fit their specific theoretical vonMises definition of capitalism. Well so what. Of course the US economy is all about capitalism and the accumulation of private wealth – enormous amounts of private wealth. These wealthy people are indeed capitalists and they run the US most powerful public and private institutions regardless of whether or not it fits your simple minded fairy tale economic model.

My posts here have been in response to other posts, in my role as an administrator. Your posts are typically canned responses to opponents in your head.

We reserve the right to not waste bandwidth and our own precious time hosting off-topic, nonsensical, hatemongering, or otherwise undesirable crap on OUR site. If you don't agree to those terms, you can get your own (FREE!) blog and write whatever you want. There's nothing unlibertarian about enforcing your own rules on your own property, but then I don't expect you to know anything about libertarianism.

Great article Justin/ If you ask me you do not toot your own horn enough/ I think you need to broadcast the fact that you were right about everything from Iraq to the motives for the attacks on 911/ Just as importantly you need to broadcast the fact that the Neocons, and those who lied us into war were wrong about everything/ They were wrong about the Iraq war being a cakewalk/ They were wrong about Iraq developing into a Jeffersonian democracy/ They were wrong about Hussien having a massive arsenal of WMDs/ Way to sock it to the Neocon!

This is rather sad, Matt, do you realize how hostile you are? Something is going on here that isn't right! Be happy people bother to comment here!

Think: what on earth is a 'libertarian'? A storm trooper? A censor? Intolerant of any critics? Think! This is vital and a major reason why libertarians fail to build a movement. Driving people away builds nothing. Blowing up bridges builds only more rivers of blood.

If your cause is not moral all you have left is to worship power. Might makes right. Whatever the president of the supposedly mightiest country on earth at the moment does is right, especially if the decisions benefit/have been made at the orders of Israel. Neocons and their zombie writers are taking civilization and the West backward with their stone-age morality. It's all about us. How are we gonna look, how is it that we didn't do better, what can we do better next time we invade some weak and innocent country? Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dead third-worlders. From where did we get that mentality, I wonder? Who else out there has the mindset that a life of one of their own is worth a thousands lives of those other creatures…

Reading excerpts from Apfelbaum an her kind just goes to show that just because you can write a couple of paragraphs doesn't mean you're not a complete moron.

Little can be done about the Zionist-controlled media, other than righteous businessowners stop advertising there (not gonna happen). What really should happen is that wealthy libertarians/conservatives need to set up their own media empires: TV, newspapers, magazines, music, etc. Where's the Kochtopus when you need it?

Unfortunately for all of us and the inocent victims of the criminal war, IT IS about israels greed for expansion and everything taht does not belong to it….
Analyse the facts with the brain not with the heart!!!!

The War of 911, a one day war, was an astounding defeat of the USG by 19 men, some with box cutters. Israel had a 6 day war, so a 1 day war is an apt a description of the events of 911. The USG cannot admit that the War of 911 was the one day war that it was and instead a vicious Bush/Cheney temper tantrum is their response to the total victory and humiliating defeat handed to the USG by OBL's inspiration who had the book on Bush as their families knew each other well.

Zionists are different from these people in one important aspect which I think is a reason for their success so far. They pretend not to have this Orwellian belief in "the progress of power" that Justin describes so well. They are constantly crying about being "pushed into the sea" if they make one false move. At Cooper Union, a free, reverse-diverse college in New York City about 75% jews they used to say " for Israel every test is a final", as Israel blew up Arabs right and left taking few casualties. If the Zionist do fall like the Christians did in the crusades, it will take a couple of centuries.

"The people pushing for war" also included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, Tony Blair, John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, John Hagee, and many others with names NOT representing the ethnicity you have in mind. And what about the )ews who opposed the war? I guess they never showed up on your radar.

I've had my own squabbles with Matt Barganier, but he's correct to point out that this site attracts many people who bring their own prepared rants. From what I can see, they usually have one specific axe to grind, summed up very clearly by Mel Gibson.

It's ironic that the same folks who lament the smearing of all Muslims for the actions of a few are so enthusiastic about demonizing one particular tribe.

But Matt Barganier shouldn't be naive. With so many articles on this site harshly critical of Israel, AIPAC, neoconservativism, and renowned Zionists in politics and the media (whose surnames tend to share the same ethnicity), it's very predictable that we'd see the kinds of comments Matt finds objectionable. You reap what you sow, Matt.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].